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Vaccine immunity period - OutsiderFan - 12-09-2020

Is anyone aware of just how long the immunity from the vaccines will last?  My assumption is at best the antibody response will last 6 months to a year, but am just guessing. In that scenario, we would need annual Covid vaccines like the flu shot.

But what if vaccine confers just 3 months of immunity?  In that case, the only way to effectively wipe out the virus would be for everyone in the world to get vaccinated within 3 months. That seems highly unlikely.  

I'd appreciate a discussion on this topic because it seems this is where the rubber really meets the road in terms of really stopping spread and ending the pandemic. Otherwise, we might individually be immune if we are under vaccine working period, but the disjointed nature of vaccine distribution and our inability to stop gathering, won't end the pandemic if the vaccine immunity period isn't long enough.

RE: Vaccine immunity period - Goose - 12-09-2020

(12-09-2020, 09:25 AM)OutsiderFan Wrote:  Is anyone aware of just how long the immunity from the vaccines will last?  My assumption is at best the antibody response will last 6 months to a year, but am just guessing. In that scenario, we would need annual Covid vaccines like the flu shot.

But what if vaccine confers just 3 months of immunity?  In that case, the only way to effectively wipe out the virus would be for everyone in the world to get vaccinated within 3 months. That seems highly unlikely.  

I'd appreciate a discussion on this topic because it seems this is where the rubber really meets the road in terms of really stopping spread and ending the pandemic. Otherwise, we might individually be immune if we are under vaccine working period, but the disjointed nature of vaccine distribution and our inability to stop gathering, won't end the pandemic if the vaccine immunity period isn't long enough.

I am pretty sure the only honest answer is we don't know. There is some data that I think BC posted showing that antibodies exist in people who had the disease many months later, but in point of fact we aren't even sure how long having the disease actually protects us, let alone a vaccine that isn't even through a full trial yet.

RE: Vaccine immunity period - BostonCard - 12-09-2020

We don't know, but the initial data (from Moderna) looks promising.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2032195


Quote:Although correlates of protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection in humans are not yet established, these results show that despite a slight expected decline in titers of binding and neutralizing antibodies, mRNA-1273 has the potential to provide durable humoral immunity.

I think most people think it will last at least a year and probably several years.

BC

RE: Vaccine immunity period - dabigv13 - 12-09-2020

Important to note that the mRNA vaccines look really good to prevent disease, but we don't yet know if patients can still be asymptomatically infected in their upper airways and transmit disease to others even if they themselves do not become sick.

If vaccinated patients do not wear masks, they could be very dangerous vectors to the unvaccinated. 

Likely the vaccines will decrease the amount of time a patient would be asymptomatically reinfected and infectious, but this is still a big area of uncertainty.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/health/covid-vaccine-mask.html

RE: Vaccine immunity period - OutsiderFan - 12-09-2020

(12-09-2020, 01:22 PM)dabigv13 Wrote:  Important to note that the mRNA vaccines look really good to prevent disease, but we don't yet know if patients can still be asymptomatically infected in their upper airways and transmit disease to others even if they themselves do not become sick.

If vaccinated patients do not wear masks, they could be very dangerous vectors to the unvaccinated. 

Likely the vaccines will decrease the amount of time a patient would be asymptomatically reinfected and infectious, but this is still a big area of uncertainty.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/health/covid-vaccine-mask.html

Ugh. Asking people to wear masks after being vaccinated would be an impossible task.  Let's all hope to heaven the vaccine stops (asymptomatic) virus spread in addition to virus infection.

RE: Vaccine immunity period - Hurlburt88 - 12-10-2020

and let's hope the "vaccine cliff" does not become a reality this coming Spring.   25% of americans thinking they are immune but in reality can be silent spreaders would make spread mitigation even more difficult than it is today

RE: Vaccine immunity period - BostonCard - 12-10-2020

This is a hunch that may well be wrong, but I think mask wearing will be less dependent on immunity status than on the severity of the pandemic.  I haven't heard many stories of people refusing to wear masks because they already had COVID-19, in which case they should largely be immune, so I don't think we will have as much mask non-adherence because of vaccination, until we've reached a critical threshold in the spring or summer where we start to go back to normal broadly.

BC